March 20, 2015 In her new poetry collection, Many Small Fires, Charlotte Pence writes about her father’s schizophrenia through the lens of ecology. Pence will read with Adam Prince on March 26, 2015, at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville; with Adam Day on March 27, 2015, at Belmont University in Nashville; and with Bradford Tice on March 30, 2015, at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. All events are free and open to the public.
March 19, 2015 Impressive artwork by Nate Powell, a gripping story by Andrew Aydin, and an eyewitness view of history from U.S. Representative John Lewis combine flawlessly in March: Book Two, the second volume of Lewis’s graphic memoir of the American civil-rights movement. This installment highlights Lewis’s Nashville-based efforts to launch Freedom Riders onto segregated bus lines throughout the South.
March 18, 2015 Jason Miller’s debut crime novel, Down Don’t Bother Me, is a clever variation on Raymond Chandler-style noir with the blue-collar soul of Chris Offutt and the wry black humor of Tom Waits. Miller will give a reading at Parnassus Books in Nashville at 6:30 p.m. on March 24, 2015, and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis at 6:30 p.m. on March 31.
March 17, 2014 Ivoe Williams, the heroine of LaShonda Katrice Barnett’s debut novel, Jam on the Vine, is an African-American girl born in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Texas to poor, hardworking parents. The story of Ivoe’s trials and triumphs as an aspiring journalist provides a vivid depiction of the black experience during one of the ugliest periods in American history. Barnett will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 23, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.
March 12, 2015 Preston Lauterbach’s Beale Street Dynasty: Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis paints a beguiling portrait of American ambition, ingenuity, tragedy, and the birth of the blues. Lauterbach will discuss the book at Rhodes College in Memphis on March 19, 2015, at 6 p.m. in the McCallum Ballroom of the Bryan Campus Life Center. The event, part of the three-day Beale Street Symposium, is free and open to the public.
March 11, 2015 Fiona Doyle’s face was horribly scarred when she was a little girl. But what if the accident had never happened? Moriah McStay’s Everything That Makes You follows Fiona and an alternative, unscarred version of herself, exploring how much (and how little) would change if we could turn back the clock and “fix” what we think is wrong with our lives. McStay will read from her debut novel at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on March 17, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.
